Siam Burma Death Railway

The plight of British and Australian POWs, as they endured the hardship of building the Burma Railway in 1942-3, is well known due to a series of documentaries and fictional works such as THE RAILWAY MAN (2013). What is not known, however, is the ways in which members of other cultures - those captured by the Japanese - experienced similar hardships.

This documentary tries to redress the balance. Based on first-hand accounts from British as well as Australian POWs, SIAM BURMA DEATH RAILWAY tells the stories of how many Asians experienced almost inhuman suffering - starvation, beating, ignominious punishments, disease and death - as they worked in gangs to build the infamous Burma railway. While the Japanese soldiers involved have often expressed their regret at the way they treated the POWs, the fact remains that this episode was one of the most shameful of the entire Second World War, similar to that of the Nazi death camps.

What becomes most evident from this documentary is the way in which Hannah Arendt's prophecy has been vindicated. In a controversial book published in the early Sixties, she argued that people were not essentially evil, but often argued that they only committed evil in an attempt to obey the orders of their paymasters. In a sense, therefore, they were not responsible for their actions. Arendt argued with some cogency that such people were 'unthinking,' deprived of the capacity to make considered judgments. After watching this harrowing piece of archive work, we might be inclined to agree.